Unions have outgrown usefulness

Byline2:

Oh, the power of unions. The town of Orange, Conn., received a ruling from the State Board of Labor Relations that the town must reinstate for the union workers free coffee and milk and to reinstate “dress down Fridays.”

Crazy, yes, but this is how much the unions control the government work force. The town had cut the freebies and eliminated the dress code as it had become slovenly. This is how out of hand unions, who comprise less than 6 percent of the work force, can be in dictating their demands. Ninety years ago unions were formed to protect workers from being abused by owners and time has made employers realize that satisfied employees work better with improved conditions and an opportunity to advance based on productivity and a desire to learn to adjust to new technology.

The unions then set their sights during the 1950s to 1980s on the public sector with strong assistance by Jimmy Carter in 1978 and then Bill Clinton made it possible for unions to infiltrate the government. During the 1930 era FDR had refused to allow unions to solicit government and municipal workers. Jim DeMint has it right when he says collective bargaining has no place in a representative democracy and public employee unions have an “insidious relationship” with Democrats.

In smokestack areas of the country the folly of bondage by unions and Democrats help to create the right-to-work laws that primarily protected workers from union abuse. Such abuse we are seeing today is in the form of states going bankrupt with their inability to pay the exorbitant concessions made to unions in the past.

New and old businesses fled to areas of the country cognizant of the fact that treating the workers right was a win-win for both the workers and employees. The win was the ability of companies to have much higher growth which meant higher stability in both good and bad economic times.

The National Institute for Labor Research statistics show that right-to-work states grew 28.3 percent vs. 14.7 percent. The modern-day worker resents the ability of unions to forcibly collect dues. In a better educated workforce the unions suffer when individuals are not willing to give part of their paycheck away after reading of the huge salaries paid to union leadership, such as that paid to Richard Trumka.

The salary numbers are readily available on the Center for Public Integrity’s Web site.

The greed and corruption in the leadership of the Unions is proving to state and local governments that they can no longer provide the financial burden the unions have placed on the economic welfare from the local community to the state level. The local governments have put off the problem for years, but unlike the federal government, which can print money 24 hours a day, the states, thank heaven, do not have that ability.

The theory of Unionism can be traced back to Frederick W. Taylor who died in 1915. Unionism, outdated and ineffective for the modern era, has always operated on the theory that businesses could never go broke, according to Michael Barone of RealClearPolitics.com. The industrialized world of Japan, China and India making better products at lower costs doomed the modern movement. Their existence survives by the Democrat Party and the millions it receives from mandated union dues.

A recent Vox caller said Wisconsin’s move to sanity is opposed by 60-70 percent of the population. Rubbish! The voters of Wisconsin last November realized their perilous position and voted in the party which offered future sound economic principals.